An Explosive Case Against the TSA

Transportation Security Administration (TSA) screeners allowed a woman who tested positive for explosives to slip by them Sunday morning at Newark Liberty International Airport, before creating another explosive situation among waiting passengers.

It was reported that at about 8:45am, the woman slipped through the TSA checkpoint at the airport’s Terminal C before she had been fully screened. By the time the airport was put on lock-down, the woman had already landed on a flight to Cleveland, Ohio, and at last report, she has still not been found by the authorities.

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Earlier that morning, TSA employees at the airport misplaced a bag, believed to have belonged to the woman, that also tested positive for trace amounts of explosives. It was finally found sitting on the tarmac after 45 minutes had passed. The Essex County Sheriff’s Office bomb squad finally cleared the bag as posing no threat after another two-and-a-half hours had passed by.

Meanwhile, as this dramatic turn of events unfolded, furious passengers who had waited for hours to board their flights learned that their flights would never leave the ground. The collective security failures Sunday caused over 100 flights to be cancelled and dozens more to be delayed.

Ironically, the Newark airport where this occurred is the same airport where 8 TSA employees were fired for sleeping on the job last June. Reportedly, photos and possible video footage revealed that the employees were sleeping while at their post intended to detect explosive materials. In another point of irony, on the TSA Blog, from 2010, the administration proudly proclaimed its implementation of expanded “Explosive Trace Detection” technology “to detect explosives hidden on people and in bags.” In addition to the competency of the TSA’s staff, this technology may also be brought into question after the bag in question was found to be no threat to the public.

The TSA has developed quite the negative track record over the last few years, with stories of disabled grandparents,’ young children’s, and others’ privacy being intrusively violated in the name of public safety, and it has especially displayed a record of incompetence at this Newark airport. This recent occurrence is just one of several cases in which passengers or luggage that actually appeared to pose a threat has eluded the TSA. In this case, though, no real threat was ever found. Once again, the TSA has failed to protect airline passengers from any real danger, but it has successfully inconvenienced them and wasted time, effort, manpower, and tax dollars. Like most entities created by the federal government, this one is proving to be a failure at accomplishing its intended purpose. Considering the current breakdown of the federal government and individual freedoms in the U.S., under the control of regressive liberal officeholders, it should not be surprising that this, yet another government failure, has developed when it has.

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